Listening comprehension in the foreign language classroom : the cognitive receptive processes in the development of Spanish phonological perception
Year: 2006
Type: dissertation
Abstract: This dissertation examines how the acquisition of the Spanish \nphonological system by English-speakers contributes to the development of \nlearners’ listening skills. The study addresses theoretical and pedagogical issues \nregarding the understanding of the receptive processes from cognitive \nperspectives of learning and language comprehension. The investigation departs \nfrom previous research that has examined almost exclusively the development of \nhigher-level processes of listening comprehension (O'Malley, et al., 1995; Goh, \n2000). This approach, however, fails to recognize evidence of the difficulties \nnovice listeners face at the perceptual and parsing levels of processing (O'Malley, \net al., 1995; Goh, 2000; Field, 2003), and the effect that these low-level \ndifficulties have in the overall listening task. \nThe present study explores a learning approach to understand why some \nlinguistic elements are more difficult to learn than others. Expanding on \nUllman’s Declarative/Procedural model (2001, 2004), it explores the role of the \ndeclarative and procedural learning systems in the development of the phonemic \nawareness of L2 sounds (i.e., the perceptual phase) and the rules of L2 lexical \nsegmentation (i.e., parsing phase). The role of practice in the development of L2 \nlistening skills in the classroom is also examined. The assumption in this study is \nthat adult learners have a schema of their L1 phonological system (prior \nknowledge); therefore, learning the L2 phonological system (new knowledge) \nimplies identification of L1 knowledge, awareness of L2 input, and a restructuring \nof the L1 knowledge structure (McLaughlin, 1990) in a phonological \naccommodation process (Gonzalez-Bueno, 1997) that integrates the L2 system. \nThe results show that regular linguistic elements of the language (e.g., \nSpanish intervocalic /d/ phoneme) are acquired by the procedural learning system, \nwhile idiosyncratic linguistic elements (e.g., /x/ phoneme and L2 segmentation \nrules) are dependent on declarative mechanisms such as awareness, practice, and \nmemorization for acquisition. The findings also indicate that, with an \ninstructional approach that includes explicit instruction of L2 sounds and lexical \nsegmentation, learners’ low levels of processing can become more efficient, \nallowing them to concentrate on higher levels of processing and facilitating their \noverall listening comprehension.
Author: Maria del Socorro Mayberry
Language: English
Subfield: Language and Linguistics
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
SDG: Quality education
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W1852794630